Appian vs. Google Cloud Platform vs. Salesforce Lightning Components & Developer Experience

Appian works great for automating manual processes and integrating multiple systems through its toolset. It gives great flexibility for establishing rules for approvals, routings, escalations, and the like. Because of the low code toolset, it's very easy to deploy and make changes as needed as processes evolve and as the organization learns to utilize the system better. Minimal maintenance is required to support the applications build on the platform. Some of the automated testing integration with tools like Jenkins is limited so that may be an issue for some.

Incentivized

When most of our stuff is in Google Cloud Platform, it works great to integrate and cross/share data that is all in Google Cloud Platform or BigQuery. It has simplified things from a permissions perspective as well. I'd say it is less appropriate when trying to test something quickly locally, or when half your stuff is in AWS or another provider.

Incentivized

If you have a large customer base and a large amount of data on each of your customers, it is really strong in creating personalized content that your salespeople can use in their pitch meetings—and then setting up workflows for automated for lifecycle journey creations to automatically go out to customers.

Incentivized

• Allows at a glance workflow documentation which assists in the need we have for information readiation.
• Drag and drop interface for workflow development greatly speeds our apps time to market.
• Using the advanced features of Appian, we are able to create working sites in a fraction of the time it would take to do so using "traditional" development.

Incentivized

• Easy to set up
• Affordable use of the tool
• Easy to access billing
• Reliable service

Incentivized

• It has a very smooth integration with Salesforce and third-party tools, ensuring easy tracking of policies and assets.
• It also has impressive security features like used-based permissions and encrypted data.
• Everything can be managed from a centralized place which saves a lot of time.

Incentivized

• Search issues when type ahead and database search are used in the same field.
• Buttons implementation where user is require[d] to click on the button description - if clicks on the button outside that text - button will not work.
• Problems with using certain off-the-shelf performance tools like WebLoad or Neoload. That is because of different dynamic variables being used internally in Appian - which these tools are unable to correlate. We are still investigating using other tools like Jmeter to overcome dynamic correlation problem for performance testing.

Incentivized

• The UI is so confusing. The console is good, but it is like a maze. There are too many menus and settings, and things do not work as expected. It takes time to get friendly, and it is not friendly for new users.
• Support experience: Sometimes, you get a great engineer, but other times, it's very difficult to talk with them as they are unable to respond as expected and solve issues late.
• Region and zone are issues, as not all services are available in all regions, which is lacking when deploying something in the same region or zone.

Incentivized

• It takes a while before it recognizes bounced emails.
• We get so many notifications from a single action. Not sure if this can be modified in the settings though.
• Error messages are sometimes unclear which makes it hard for us to identify the problem.

We recently renewed our license with Appian. We are convinced that its flexibility, relative ease of use, the support they provide, there mobile advancements and their general willingness and desire to see us succeed all contributed to our reason to renew our agreement with Appian

Appian is a low code environment, because of this, a very good visual interface is required. Appian is providing a feature-rich dashboard [that] we can use for building the dashboards and other interfaces. Appian also provides patches and releases to enhance these features. A developer can start off development just by going through a basic course from the Appian learning community.

Incentivized

The Google Cloud Platform console is pretty slick for BigQuery especially. I have liked the visibility I get from using that and the way to integrate and see what's in our data lake. The logging console for tracking GKE jobs isn't quite as great, which is why it doesn't get a full 10.

Incentivized

It's very good, but it's still living in a little bit in an older design aspect, but I think a lot of it is about to come out, just hasn't quite gotten there yet. Still a little clunky from a you have to know it to know it or you know it to use it. It takes a little bit of training to get into it. It's not quite the, anybody can come in and start using it immediately, type feel.

Incentivized

Appian is one of the leading low code business automation platforms that support RPA, decision rules, case management, workflow automation, and machine learning all in a single bundle. But it is also harder to implement and replace the traditional business process.

Incentivized

I am not an administrator so there may very well be outstanding Support and I am just not privy to it. On a user level it's hard to gauge the effectiveness and responsiveness of Support because nearly everything has to go through an administrator

Incentivized

As analyst I participated in a developer boot camp. At times it was hard to keep up but most of the time it made sense. Trainer took the time to explain and slowed pace down to answer questions etc.

Incentivized

Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.

Incentivized

It was really seamless. SaaS in the true definition of the word. We logged on and started using the product. Very easy.

Incentivized

Appian has enormously transformed and keeps on updating the product every quarter to meet the latest needs of the world with new innovations & technologies being integrated within the platform. What gives more pleasure than a product that keeps on continuous[ly] improv[ing]?

Incentivized

Google Cloud Platform is release later than Amazon web service, I think that why Google Cloud Platform can learned and optimized the Dashboard and some features that make it easy to use and can be cheaper than amazon web service.

We were previously using an older version prior to it becoming Salesforce Lightning Platform so we were well adverse on the advantages of using a CRM, to begin with. It made sense to convert to Salesforce Lightning Platform after we were given a free trial of the platform. Certain reps were chosen to experiment with it and from there a decision was made to move forward. We've been customers ever since.

Incentivized

• I believe it has negatively impacted our release dates. There may have been a misunderstanding as to the learning curve, even though it is "low code."
• The look and feel of the applications created using Appian have uniformity and it's easier to have "reuse" between applications.
• There is less developer control when it comes to features. I think this mainly has to do with the amount of plugins available. I would think there should be many more available plugins. But again, our use case is probably different than most others.

Incentivized

• It allows us to focus our efforts on other, more important items at hand
• It gives us an affordable option letting me know it's available to all users, not just the largest scale ones out there
• The customer service is always helpful and reliable, along with the service itself which lets me focus on my work instead of worrying about the service.

Incentivized

• Better visibility of Accounts and Contacts interactions makes it easier to maintain during employee transitions.
• Tracking of current jobs and relating them to past jobs is very useful.
• More efficient use of Sales Reps time.
• Sales Managers have good visibility into how their people are working.

Incentivized